


New Era

by en passant (corinthian)



Series: Faith & Guns [4]
Category: Gundam Wing
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-03
Updated: 2014-12-03
Packaged: 2018-02-27 23:13:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,893
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2710160
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/corinthian/pseuds/en%20passant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The coda to the series, takes place after parenthetical.</p>
            </blockquote>





	New Era

Duo notices it almost immediately, it’s hard not to when he knows every inch of Trowa’s skin. The _M_ on Trowa’s back is new, it’s still a scab and not yet a scar and he knows _exactly_ where it came from. He wishes that he had noticed it about three seconds earlier, though, before he had slid under the covers to join Trowa in bed.

“Tro’.”

“Hm?”

He traces the letter. He almost wants to dig it up with his fingernail, but blood doesn’t interest him, particularly blood on Trowa. It wasn’t exactly a surprise. Trowa had said that Middie would probably be rough — but that was their agreement, a navigation of their needs in a way. Trowa had been insistent on it, but this was the first time he’d used it. They had an open relationship, as long as they discussed who else might be. . . partaking. Duo had used it twice. Once, when Trowa was gone for eight months and he had stayed with Hilde to stave off loneliness. And then again, for a weekend getaway with Quatre.

The thing was, Duo had never been in a relationship with someone Trowa hated. And Duo was pretty sure he hated Middie Une.

“She’s just pathetic like that.” Trowa murmurs, twists around so he can look at Duo. “. . . ah, and Dorothy was there.”

They had not, though, agreed on Dorothy. Duo frowns. He picks at the scab on Trowa’s back.

“You didn’t say Dorothy would be there.”

“I didn’t know.”

“I trust you, but. . .”

“It’s not happening again.” Trowa shifts again, this time fully turning. “I think we should end it, the agreement.”

Duo’s startled. “You were the one who wanted it in the first place.”

“I don’t, anymore.”

“Were you waiting for her, Tro?” Duo’s voice is soft. He knows he’s right by the way Trowa’s eyes drop off to the side. It’s barely noticeable but Duo has learned Trowa, and learned all of his little tricks and facades. “All this time.”

“It’s not like that.”

“Then?”

“She said she loved me.” He doesn’t have to clarify that he means ten years ago. “And that was who I was, until . . .”

Duo doesn’t have to make Trowa say it. He knows. Trowa was always constructing his home out of something. During the war it had been _Heavyarms_ , the name Trowa Barton had just been the label that came with the machine. It was only after the Gundam had been destroyed that Trowa began again, with a different life, a different home, but tried to connect the disparate existences he’d made for himself together.

“Until what?” But he pushes, anyway. He’s a little annoyed, a little mad. Dorothy shouldn’t have been there, Trowa shouldn’t have come home with a girl’s initial carved onto his back — and if Trowa was asking to end their open relationship agreement it meant that they were moving into uncharted territory. Together. Duo had dated, he had even had serious relationships, but nothing _past_ that.

“You,” Trowa whispers, but it’s with more fondness than anything. “Home, with you.”

Which meant that the first kiss they had ever shared — fifteen, young, stupid, had been when Trowa was still the boy constructed by Middie Une. Duo hated her a little more.

“You’re so fucked up.” He groans. Trowa laughs, he always finds Duo’s accusatory banter funny.

“You’re one to talk, Death God.” And then he kisses Duo, softly, tenderly, as if to make up for the scab on his back. “If you want, I’ll get it covered.”

Duo’s feelings on Trowa’s cover jobs are also mixed. He’s not a stranger to tattoos, Duo has some ink himself — mostly small subtle things, remembrances. But Trowa has scars, and two brands. There hadn’t been any tattoo parlors on the road and Duo knows Trowa finds something more powerful about purposeful scarification than he does inking.

Sometimes Duo wonders if he just doesn’t like the idea of _other_ people marking Trowa’s skin like that. So, he offers. “No, let me.”

“You want to do it?” Trowa licks his lips. Duo laughs, snorts, musses at Trowa’s bangs.

“You perv.”

“I’d like it, if you did.” Trowa adds, a little more seriously. “You’ll have to do it a few times, to do it properly. If you only do it once, it won’t look right.” A warning, because Trowa was weirdly perfectionist about things like this.

“You mean it, about ending the agreement?”

“There’s only you, Duo. She . . .” he fumbles for the words, even as his face remains as calm as ever, “. . .I don’t know what I expected.”

“I had a crush on a girl once, when I was a kid. I thought that kissing her would be the best thing in the world.”

“And?”

“She bit me.”

“You probably deserved it.”

“Shut up and go to sleep, it’s late.”

“I trust you.” Trowa says, ghosts a kiss over Duo’s nose, his cheeks and then finally his lips.

“Love you too, Tro’.”

—

“I don’t know what the fuck to cut.” Duo says, for the fourth time.

“Whatever you want.” Trowa replies, also for the fourth time.

“It’s your back.”

“It’s your mark.”

“Let’s do this later.”

“Mmhmm.”

“Don’t do that, here.” Duo sets down the knife — the small almost scalpel like knife that Trowa had produced earlier — and kisses the carved _M_. He teeths at it, careful not to break the skin and then rolls his tongue up Trowa’s shoulder.

“In the kitchen?” Trowa asks. “We eat here.”

“And did you complain about that when we broke in the new table?” Duo laughs, and in memory of the table he bites, harder, on Trowa’s earlobe.

“That was special.” Is the protest, but Trowa’s fingers find Duo’s belt, his zipper, soon they’re both naked. “Sex but no blood in the kitchen?” He asks again.

“Sorry babe, but you bleeding everywhere is enough to make me lose my lunch. _This_ on the other hand. . .” And, with his other hand, Duo fondles Trowa, “I’m hungry for already.”

“You can use your teeth,” Trowa smirks, gives a full and toothy smile, and then laughs a little at Duo’s horrified expression. “Here, let me go first — “

“If you even think about using your teeth like that, Trowa Barton, I will shoot you.”

“I thought you didn’t want blood in the kitchen?” But then Trowa has done the sexy-sink-to-his-knees thing that Duo never gets tired of. It’s kind of like a kneel, but with a little sway of his hips and the half-closed off expression on his face. Duo has, does, always find Trowa’s introspection oddly beautiful. 

“Yeah, well — “ there’s a pattern to how Trowa worships Duo with his mouth. Always, even at their most desperate, he starts with kisses to Duo’s thighs. It’s a practiced form of warning, in a way. Duo wonders if Trowa has ever been kneed in the head while sucking someone off. Then the swirl of his tongue, a sign that he’s moving on to Duo’s cock. “Gun kink, maybe.” He mutters. Trowa deviates from his normal habits, flicking his tongue out against Duo, almost mockingly.

“Bang bang?” He whispers.

“This is terribly unsexy.” Duo mock-pouts, especially since the flush on his cheeks and the rising erection say differently. Trowa gives him that all-knowing look, thumbs rubbing circles onto Duo’s hips, before licking up the length of Duo’s cock. He does, at the base, impishly dig lightly with his teeth and receives a light swat for his troubles. “ _Barton._ ” Duo warns.

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Trowa murmurs. 

It doesn’t take much coaxing from Trowa’s mouth to bring Duo to the brink. “Shit, Tro’, you ready?” The hum of affirmation Trowa gives is all it takes. Duo sinks down next to Trowa, and reaches with both his hands but for different things. One, to go around Trowa’s shoulders, hold him close, and the other drifts towards Trowa’s hip. With a mumble, something unintelligible, Trowa gently bats the hand at his hip away.

They are, in some ways, entirely sexually incompatible. Duo finds being worshipped, loved, tenderly held to be one of the most attractive experiences. Trowa, on the other hand, seemed to have the oddest slow burn of any partner Duo had ever been with and it had worried him earlier in their relationship. Their common ground was often the harsh desperate sex fueled by adrenaline and —

“Good?” Trowa asks, nuzzles at Duo’s hair. Duo laughs, both arms wrap around Trowa then.

“Yeah, it’s always good. You?”

“Very comfortable, but the floor is a little cold.” Trowa hums again, an echo of his earlier sound, “Bath?”

“Sounds great.”

—

In the end, Duo doesn’t think he can do it. If it was something deadly or poisonous it wouldn’t be any question. But both the idea of digging his knife or letting someone else do it, into Trowa’s back seemed entirely unappealing.

“I’ll just leave it,” he says, finally, pushes on the _M_ with two fingers.

“You’re okay with that?” Trowa doesn’t roll over, he’s already half-asleep. 

“Well, are you?”

“Mm, would have liked something of your’s there instead.”

Duo sighs, pushes again on the scab that’s started to scar lightly. “Ink, I’ll agree too.”

“Mm,” Trowa says. 

“If you’re asleep this is going to not be worth it,” Duo grumbles. On occasion he had conversations with Trowa while the other had been sound asleep. It was kind of amazing but also irritating.

“If it’s yours, then ink’s fine.”

“You sure?”

“Duo, go to sleep.”

—

Trowa again, insists, that he doesn’t want to see it until Duo’s picked it out and it’s on his skin. “I trust you.” Trowa says. And Duo knows that when Trowa says it he really means _I love you_ and somehow that makes it entirely too nerve-wracking. 

“What if I get “I love Mo” tattooed on you?” Duo asks.

“Depends, who’s Mo?”

“Or like, a butt.”

“You’d tattoo a butt on me.”

“Maybe it would be my butt.”

“Well, you’re the one who has to look at it.”

“Why can’t you be a little afraid of the power you’ve given me?” Duo stabs his pencil onto the notepad. He does it two more times and glares at the black dots. 

“I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t put something awful on my back, because you will have to look at it more than me. And if it’s too bad I’ll just get it cut off.” Trowa says, far too pragmatically and then adds, “And, I trust you.”

Duo stabs the notepad again, for good measure.

—

In the end, it’s a small tattoo. Just large enough to fully cover the _M_. The tattoo artist is impressed by Trowa’s dedication to trust, but makes them sign extra forms. Trowa asks Duo to take a picture with an antiquated, ancient, ridiculous camera — all of which he forgives when it immediately spits out a photo. 

“A star.” Trowa smiles.

“The impact of a star,” Duo shifts, scuffs his boot on the floor, “A shooting star that’s crashed into something and left behind that.”

“Shooting stars don’t leave star shapes behind.”

“They do if they’re symbolic.”

“Oh? And what’s it symbolic of?”

“Shut up and kiss me.”

Trowa doesn’t have any smart come back to that, so he does shut up and kiss Duo.

“Duo.”

“Yeah?”

“I love you.”

Duo’s fingers dent the polaroid a little. “I could get used to hearing that more often.”


End file.
